Whoa dang been awhile since I posted a thread in here... been way too busy lately.

Anyway, how can you tell for sure if an engine is missing? Like I think it might have a slight miss at idle because of the way it feels, but is there a way to "see" it missing, like maybe with a timing light or something?

 

Dang it's like I go away for a few days and now nobody even notices when I post...

 

Wow I must have stumped everybody

 

i dont see why hooking a timing light to it wouldnt work.. or you could just pull each plug and touch the threads to the valve cover nuts and crank it to see if they are sparking..

 

I guess what I was asking was how could I use a timing light to see if it's missing... I would have to hook the pickup wire onto each spark plug wire, right?

 

no, just the #1 plug wire, and then to a ground and watch for the lil red dot on your crank pulley, correct me if im wrong

 

yeah but I mean to determine which cylinder is missing, wouldn't I need to connect the pickup to each spark plug wire one at a time? If #3 was missing I don't think a timing light would show anything if it was reading off of #1, right?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by PatrickGSR94 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">yeah but I mean to determine which cylinder is missing, wouldn't I need to connect the pickup to each spark plug wire one at a time? If #3 was missing I don't think a timing light would show anything if it was reading off of #1, right?</TD></TR></TABLE>


Doesn't seem like it would. Seeing as you would probably have to check them all, just a guess since Ive never had this trouble, but a suggestion none the less.

 

I do that sometimes just to see if all of the wires are getting voltage. I clamp the inductive pick-up on each of the wires and point the light at the palm of my hand. It tells you nothing about the spark plug tho.

Misfires, by whatever the cause, are detectable by significant variations in rpm. I'm just not sure what would be considered significant in your case.

Pointing the timing light and seeing how the consistent the pulley marks are landing relative to the reference pointer, might tell you something. Very jumpy marks indicate large changes in rpm.

You can also tell if it's misfiring by the way the motor sounds. It should sound consistently smooth with no lumpy or stumbling quality to it. A lean misfire will sound different from an overly rich condition misfire. Wet plugs are also a sign of possible overly rich misfiring.

 

I would just try changing your plugs and if you really wanna get into it replace the cap, rotor, and wires. That way in the back of your head you know they're all brand spankin new

 

Patrick, did you forget everything??? Did you pull the plugs and check them? You might of just fouled a plug. I had a allmost new NGK foul on me for no real reason. Swapped all four out and it ran just fine.

I really dont think that the miss would shoe up on the timing gun. From what i remember the ligh is set off by the voltage going through the plug wire. As long as the wire is getting volts the light will go off. Unless of course the cap/rotor are bad.

 

well I run NGK copper plugs, which get changed every 10K-15K miles, which for me is about every 3-5 months. I think I last changed my plugs around March or so, might be time to change them again...

*checks spiffy MS Access maintenance history database*

hmm my plugs have about 11K miles on them, I might just change them again here soon.

Sometimes when I sit at a red light, I might see the RPM fluctuate up and down between 600 and 750 rpm (just a very small fluctuation, but it's constant, at least for a little while). Also sometimes I can feel in the floorboard what sorta feels like the engine "skipping a beat" or something, not sure really how to describe it.

But when driving and accelerating it's totally fine, still gets 32-34 MPG.

 

I know exactly what you're talking about. Unfortunately, I never solved my problem. It happened after I installed RC310 injectors while using a VAFC at the time (no wideband was ever used, but closed-loop feedback was still active). It went away when I switched to Hondata. That's all I can tell you.

 

Plug. I had 1 ngk go bad after jsut a few hundred miles. Swap them out and i bet you will be fine

 

cool I will try that... gotta love an $8 set of plugs.